


Cut Away Until I Find the Core

by owl_coffee



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mycroft is an awful person, Sibling Rivalry, i will fight you on this, look at what he does, no really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 03:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14662500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owl_coffee/pseuds/owl_coffee
Summary: He's not supposed to be here.





	Cut Away Until I Find the Core

"Let's do open discussion before we wrap up," suggests the facilitator. "I have kind of a different topic in mind," he continues, "Craziest thoughts about your disease? You know what I mean. You know they're nuts, but they just keep popping into your head anyway."

  
"I often wonder if I should have been born in another time." says Sherlock, on impulse. He's still new to actually speaking at these things. The facilitator gives him a look. Right, introductions. It is his least favourite part of meetings. "Sorry. My name is Sherlock, and I'm an addict."

  
Everyone choruses, "Hi, Sherlock."

  
Sherlock continues his thread, diffidently. "My - my senses are unusually-- well, one could even say unnaturally-- keen. And ours is an era of distraction. It's, uh, a punishing drumbeat of constant input. This - this cacophony which follows us into our homes and into our beds. Seeps into our, into our souls, for want of a better word. For a long time, uh, there was only one poultice for my raw nerve endings, and that was, uh, copious drug use." He tries to explain, voice echoing emptily in the over-large room. "So in my less productive moments, I'm given to wonder if I'd just been born when it was a little - quieter out there, would I have even become an addict in the first place? M-might I have been more focused? A more fully realized person?"

  
"What, like Ancient Greece?" suggests another partipant, interrupting.

  
"You any idea what passed for dental care in the Hellenic era? Mn?" Sherlock retorts, impatient, "No, no, I'd, um, I'd want some of the wonders of modernity. Just before everything got -- " he gestures incoherently, "Amplified." Sherlock suddenly feels close to tears. These meetings are often useless but every so often a real thought is drawn out of him -

  
"Something like what?" says a familiar voice from the back of the room. Sherlock turns and there he is, mocking, in his all-black suit sitting on one of the folding chairs. "Two hundred years ago?"

  
Sherlock can't breathe for a moment. He heard everything, that intimacy, that revelation, and mocked it - "Mycroft." he manages. Not supposed to be here.

  
"Website said it was an open meeting. I came to support my brother, so please go on. It's - " Mycroft smiles, shark-like, "It's fascinating."

  
"No!" Sherlock tears his gaze from Mycroft to look at the facilitator, who is shaking his head in sympathy. "I, uh, I, uh, I-I'm so sorry. Sorry." Sherlock gets up from his chair on shaky legs and stumbles out of there. Mycroft gets up to follow him out as he bursts through the double doors.

Joan's sitting outside, waiting for him to finish. "Hey, you leaving early?" she asks, seeing the look on his face.

  
Then Mycroft follows him out of the doors. "Did you really mean what you said in there or were you just winding them up?" he asks, sounding genuinely curious.

  
"Mycroft," says Joan, puzzled, hoping for the best as usual.

  
"I wouldn't have said anything at all if I'd known the meeting was _compromised!_ Explain yourself!" Sherlock can barely control himself.

  
Mycroft says quietly, somehow reasonably, "Your maid told me you'd gone out. I wheedled her a bit to find out where."

  
"You live in England!" Sherlock shouts. He tries not to sound angry, he knows Joan is going to take Mycroft's side, she always takes the side of the person who doesn't get angry in a fight, it's her family history -

  
"Did you know they've invented a flying conveyance capable of hurtling its passengers vast distances?" Mycroft says smugly.

  
Sherlock can't even speak. "Hah."

  
Mycroft continues, smoothly, I-am-the-adult-in-this-situation, "Joan, Joan, delighted to see you." He reaches out to shake her hand and she takes it. Then he leans in to kiss her cheek but she pulls out of range too soon. "Oh, sorry." he says, smarmily, "Oh, dear."

  
Joan is flustered. "Um, so what are you doing in New York?" she asks.

  
"I planned to fly out next month. We're opening a branch of my restaurant Diogenes in Tribeca. I intended to give you plenty of warning, of course, but, um, circumstances brought me here earlier."

  
"Circumstances?" says Sherlock incredulously.

  
"Yes, a good friend of ours is in a bit of trouble, Sherlock."

  
"We haven't got any mutual friends," he bites out, and Mycroft is finally starting to react with the appropriate anger.

  
"Acquaintance, then, might be a better way of putting it." Mycroft smiles again, directly at Joan. "I'd like to explain it to you, over dinner."

  
She makes a little "Oh" sound. They did sleep together in London, after all, realises Sherlock with a sick lurch of his stomach. That's what the missed cheek-kiss was about.

"Excuse me," he says, and hastily exits for the toilets. Where he spends the next fifteen minutes curled in the corner of a stall pressing his fingernails into the palms of his hands, trying to breathe normally again.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a Black Ghosts lyric. Scene from season 2, episode 1.
> 
> Mycroft is not a nice man. Repeat, Mycroft is not a nice man. He is a pathological liar and we really should have canon to reflect that. Instead the canon *loves* him and is constantly excusing his large and small betrayals of Sherlock and Joan. In particular, Sherlock's platonic relationship with Joan seems to be regarded as lesser than the sexual relationship she develops with Mycroft, sometimes by Joan herself. Mycroft repeatedly asserts that because he is Sherlock's brother he has a right to him and to his life, and this is affirmed in canon. Joan's optimistic 'FAMILY!<3' perspective is almost always considered correct. She's trusting of Mycroft because he seems charming and she turns out to be right, despite Sherlock's numerous warnings about how the man has acted in the past toward him, and his constant boundary-violations in the show - entering their brownstone without permission and greeting them from within, blowing up Sherlock's possessions, etc.


End file.
